Shield Technology Partners Inc., a company that invests in managed service providers and optimizes their business operations, has closed a $100 million funding round.

The financing was announced today. It was provided entirely by Thrive Holdings, an investor focused on backing companies that offer information technology and accounting services. Thrive Holdings launched Shield last June in collaboration with another fund called ZBS Partners.

Managed service providers, or MSPs, are businesses that manage other organizations’ technology infrastructure on their behalf. Shield reportedly acquires stakes worth between 60% and 90% in regional MSPs. Those service providers retain their leadership teams and brands while gaining access to the resources of their new parent company.

Shield helps MSPs with backoffice tasks such as recruiting, accounting and monitoring business performance. It also optimizes the technology stacks they use to deliver services to clients. Shield has an engineering team that develops custom software for portfolio companies.

The company says that its engineering team is “working alongside OpenAI researchers to build” artificial intelligence tools. That collaboration is the fruit of a partnership between the ChatGPT developer and Shield investor Thrive Holdings’ parent company.

Thrive Holdings was formed last April by Thrive Capital, an investment firm with a significant stake in OpenAI. It obtained much of that stake by leading a $6.6 billion round for the artificial intelligence provider in 2024. This past December, OpenAI became an investor in Thrive Holdings. The companies announced at the time that they would collaborate to help Thrive Holdings portfolio companies such as Shield to deploy AI.

Shield detailed today that it has developed two custom AI tools to ease its MSPs’ work. The first, which is called Sentinel, analyzes information technology support tickets from an MSP’s customers and routes each request to the engineer best-equipped to respond. It also prioritizes requests by urgency. Shield’s other custom AI tool, called Spectre, uses AI agents to automatically solve certain IT issues.

The company’s automation tools can process about 60% of customer tickets. According to Shield, they can reduce several of those tasks’ median time to resolution by more than half. That leaves engineers with more time to tackle other tickets.

Shield had majority stakes in four MSPs when it launched last June. Today, it has nine portfolio companies that provide IT services to more than 1,500 organizations. Shield says its portfolio companies topped the $100 million annual revenue mark in 2025, which is good news for OpenAI. Its stake in Thrive Holdings will reportedly grow if the investment firm’s portfolio companies achieve certain business milestones. 

Shield will use the proceeds from its funding round to acquire additional MSPs and develop new products. “This investment allows Shield to double down on building an AI-first IT services platform, equipping our partners with the capabilities and resources they need to create long-term value and competitive advantage for the businesses they serve,” said Chief Executive Officer Jim Siders.

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